Pagina's

Alex Epstein has an excellent op-ed in the Intellectual Conservative about the misdirected attempts at appeasement in the West in general.

We face, [some] commentators say, a crisis of "Muslim opinion." We must, they say, win the "hearts and minds" of angry Muslims by heaping public affection on Islam, by shutting down Guantanamo, by being more "evenhanded" between free Israel and the terrorist Palestinian Authority — and certainly by avoiding any new military action in the Muslim world. If we fail to win over "Muslim opinion," we are told, we will drive even more to become terrorists.

However, when we talk about "Muslim opinion" things tend to go awry:

So-called Muslim opinion is not the unanimous and just consensus that its seekers pretend. It is the irrational and unjust opinion of the world's worst Muslims: Islamists and their legions of "moderate" supporters and sympathizers. These people oppose us not because of any legitimate grievances against America, but because they are steeped in a fundamentalist interpretation of their religion — one that views America's freedom, prosperity, and pursuit of worldly pleasures as the height of depravity. They do not seek respect for the rights of the individual (Muslim or non-Muslim), they seek a world in which the rights of all are sacrificed to the dictates of Islam.

Also read the rest. It does a great job skewering the hypocrisy of ME "grievances" (lamenting torture in Abu Ghraib, while 'these same Muslims are silent about the summary convictions and torture — real torture, with electric drills and vats of acid — that are official policy and daily practice throughout the Middle East').